Summary: Upon discovering that Dark Enchantress Cookie intends to take their soul jams for herself, the Beasts reluctantly go the the Ancients, or more specifically, Pure Vanilla Cookie for help.
Meanwhile, Pure Vanilla Cookie has been thinking. If Shadow Milk Cookie was capable of nearly corrupting the Soul Jam of Truth, then who says things can't go the other way around as well? What if they can purify the Beasts' soul jams?
Surely none of this can go wrong.
Word Count: 1.9k
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They’d been betrayed, yet again. It seemed that might be all that they were good for.
Dark Enchantress Cookie had only wanted their soul jam for herself. Honestly, they should have expected it.
But even the beasts had been fooled by the false soul jams she’d bestowed upon them.
In hindsight, it should’ve been easy to know that they were fake. Their real soul jams were attached to their bodies, still confined deep within the silver tree. There was no way Dark Enchantress Cookie should’ve been able to get hold of them. They would’ve been able to sense it had she done so.
They should’ve been able to sense it if she had done so.
And yet, excited as they were by freedom, even if it was not within their proper bodies, most of them had completely cut off their attachment to their original self’s senses. Who’d want to deal with feeling like you’re trapped in a prison of silver bark when you’re trying to have fun? Nobody, that’s who.
Definitely not Shadow Milk, at least.
When Dark Enchantress Cookie had given him this body, along with the physical presence of his half of his ‘soul jam’, he hadn’t even questioned it.
…He thinks so at least.
But the logistics of how Dark Enchantress Cookie had [DECEIVED] them was a pointless thing to think and worry about. It had already happened, there was no point in dwelling upon it. All that matters now was that it did happen-
-and the beasts want revenge.
They’d convened together, for the first time since their escape, to discuss it. Well, really, discuss was too light of a word. Argued would be more apt. Battled would possibly be even more accurate. Shadow Milk was glad he still had the ability to slightly manipulate time, this whole thing would’ve taken a month instead of less than a week if he hadn’t done so.
Burning Spice had wanted to attack Dark Enchantress Cookie directly. Immediately. Honestly, what an idiotic idea. She had made these bodies that they were in. Shadow Milk had ignored it of his own volition to leave the truth unacknowledged, but he knew there was something wrong about this dough. Sure, it could just be the fact it wasn’t his real body, but he was certain there was something more to it than that.
If he had been in her place, he would’ve included some kind of failsafe, possibly even a way to contro-
Nah. He didn’t like that. Better not to think about it, she probably hadn’t done anything.
She hadn’t done anything to these bodies at all.
But still, he’d shot the idea of directly attacking her down. “Too risky, too risky!”. The others hadn’t even questioned him. He always knew more than them after all. They’d follow his every word if he played his cards right.
It was why they had listened to Dark Enchantress Cookie in the first place, for it had been Shadow Milk who had told them all to follow her plan. Mystic Flour had calmly brought this point up, and Shadow Milk had needed to waste several hours on dodging Burning Spice’s attacks. Pointless time that could’ve been used for much better, more important things; such as making a plan. An actually useful plan, that wouldn’t result in them trapped back in that blasted forsaken tree, freshly soul jamless.
…There weren’t really many plans where that didn’t become the end result. Trust him, Shadow Milk had made enough plans to fill three conspiracy boards, before he’d stopped bothering with them and stuck to purely writing things down on paper.
In the end, only one option was chosen, and none of the beasts were happy about it. It was the only plan that had a chance at granting them true freedom- but also had an equally as likely chance of getting them put back in the tree, forever. A real 50/50 shot. A coin flip, a game of pure luck.
Good thing Shadow Milk was skilled at bending luck to serve his own whims.
Which led to him now, exiting a portal on the outskirts of the Vanilla Kingdom as the sun set in the distance. Sunset was the second most perfect time of day to sneak around- the first, of course, being midnight, but that wasn’t relevant.
Shadow Milk easily twisted his appearance into something unrecognizable, gently setting his feet on the ground-
-only to let out a startled yelp he would later fervently deny making as a rope snatched around his ankle, shocking his disguise off of him.
A brief second later, he found himself dangling upside down from a tree.
He remained near frozen outside of the slight swinging back and forth for a few moments, his mind slowly catching up to what had just happened. He purposefully ignored the laughter ringing in his ears as he huffed, about to free himself-
“Shadow Milk Cookie!?!”
He froze again, turning his attention to the side.
Fuck, what were the little gnats doing here?
Gingerbrave, Strawberry Cookie, and Wizard Cookie stood in the bushes, looking dumbfounded. Shadow Milk almost laughed at their expressions, just barely swallowing the reaction down, it would do him no good in the long run after all.
Still though, as humiliating as this was, (a fact which he was definitely ignoring), he could in fact use this turn of events to his advantage.
…That being said, he had remained silent far too long. Time to fix that~.
“Oh nooOooOoo~.” He whined, purposefully putting way too much dramatics behind his words, “It seems I’ve fallen into the most dastardly of traps! Whatever is a poor cookie to do~? If only there was someone here to help meeeee.”
There was no way those kids were going to fall for that, and Shadow Milk knew it. Which was why the next series of words he was going to say were imperative for this hastily made plan to work-
“Let’s help him.” Gingerbrave said, and Shadow Milk’s mouth shut with an audible click.
What?!
“What?!?” Wizard Cookie unknowingly echoed Shadow Milk’s thoughts, reaching out and grabbing hold of Gingerbrave’s arm as he moved to step out of the bushes and towards Shadow Milk. “Are you insane? This is clearly a trap! There’s no way Shadow Milk Cookie would’ve fallen into a rope trap this obvious!”
Ouch. If any of them ever found out he hadn’t intended for this to happen, it’d stain his pride forever. Well, looking on the, ugh, bright side, at least one of the little gnats wasn’t a complete dunce.
He kept a bored expression on his face as he watched the three cookies convene in a small circle, whispering to each other. He considered freeing himself from the rope while they were distracted and scaring them half to crumbling, but unfortunately, he had an act to sell at the moment…
Gingerbrave turned to face him yet again, Wizard Cookie and Strawberry Cookie standing slightly behind them.
“Shadow Milk Cookie, we’ve come to a compromise!” He declared. Shadow Milk barely resisted rolling his eyes, he certainly hadn’t agreed to any sort of compromise. Gingerbrave continued on, “We will take you to Pure Vanilla Cookie-”
Oh, good, that was exactly what he wanted actually, seemed he wouldn’t have to manipulate the silly little cookies much after all…
“-but, we’re going to tie you up first!”
“You’re gonna huh.” Shadow Milk deadpanned- and next thing he knew, the rope that had been wrapped around his ankle was wrapped around his arms, pinning them against his sides. He blinked, slowly, almost as if he was coming out of a dream state, trying to recall how exactly he had ended up in this situation, specifically.
“Alright, come on, Shadow Milk Cookie!” Gingerbrave gave a tug on the other end of the rope, and this time Shadow Milk really did roll his eyes as he started obediently walking, letting the kids lead him along. He could escape from this at any moment, did these kids really think they actually had him trapped?
Based on the suspicious glances Wizard Cookie kept throwing him over his shoulder, perhaps not.
Shadow Milk, for a moment, let himself float off the ground, before dropping back down to walk again. Floating right now would just make him akin to a balloon, and he would not let that sort of comparison stand. Walking would have to do, for now, even if it made his feet hurt. It wasn’t like he usually walked in these heels, after all.
At the very least, the trio kept to the streets without any other cookies running around, sparing Shadow Milk from possible future humiliation. Still, he kept himself ready to throw on an illusion, just in case.
Thankfully, it seemed like that wouldn’t be necessary, as they were standing at the doors of the castle much sooner, and much easier than Shadow Milk had thought. Seriously, did this place just have no guards, or did these kids just somehow know how to avoid them? If silly kids could manage to get around the guards, with a beast in tow no less, exactly how safe was this place really?
Maybe the cookies here all thought themselves safe enough with just the presence of an Ancient around here. Ha. Laughable.
Almost as if merely thinking of him had summoned him, Pure Vanilla Cookie opened the castle’s door.
Shadow Milk didn’t even let him get a word out.
“Alright!” He said, dropping down through a portal and reappearing directly in front of Gingerbrave and the others, freed from the ropes, briefly allowing himself to relish in the shock and fear on their faces before waving a hand. “You three sillies aren’t needed anymore~! Bye bye now.”
The three of them were shoved back by a flash of magic, landing on their backs with gasps indicative of their breath being knocked out of them. Shadow Milk reached behind himself to stop Pure Vanilla mid-movement, summoning his staff and using the back of it to shove Pure Vanilla further back into the room.
Gingerbrave, Strawberry Cookie, and Wizard Cookie were just beginning to push themselves off the ground when Shadow Milk slammed the door shut on them.
“Ah, Shadow Milk-” Pure Vanilla started to say, and Shadow Milk immediately spun around, getting much too close to the other in less than the blink of an eye.
“Nilly~! It’s sooo good to see you again.” The last word was hissed out, almost like a threat. Pure Vanilla, irritatingly enough, didn’t even react, instead glancing over Shadow Milk’s shoulder in the direction of the door, where the distinct banging and shouting of three very panicked cookies could be heard. Great. Fantastic. With that racket, they’d have the whole castle down here in no time flat. Shadow Milk needed to make this quick. “Listen-”
“Is this your way of taking me up on my offer?” Pure Vanilla asked, and Shadow Milk briefly tilted his head to the side.
“What offer?” He asked, then, before Pure Vanilla could answer, “Nevermind, I don’t care! I’m here for something much more important, you see, silly Nilly, you’re going to have roommates!”
“I-” Pure Vanilla paused, “...Roommates, plural?”
“Uh, duh, that’s what I said. Y’know, I thought you were going blind, not deaf.” Shadow Milk let out an overacted disappointed sigh, floating back away from Pure Vanilla and reaching into his sleeve. “Don’t worry, you don’t get a say in this deal~!”
And with that, he threw 4 cards up into the air, and summoned the rest of the Beasts.
Fantastic advice!! And something I’ve realized I’ve been doing for myself these last 6-7 years, even though I never had a name for it.
Seriously, this is such a great way to go about organizing your home.
I really can’t express how much easier your life can be when you accept that there’s no objectively right way to do this kind of stuff, especially when you let go of the idea that it’s a moral failure when you can’t do something the “correct way” nor is it evidence of you being lazy.
Working with (leaning into) your natural limits and instincts can do wonders for you in your day-to-day life.
I opened Word yesterday to discover that it now contains CoPilot. It follows you as you type and if you have a personal Microsoft 365 account, you can't turn it off. You will be given 60 AI credits per month and you can't opt out of it.
The only way to banish it is to revert to an earlier version of Office. There is lot of conflicting information and overly complex guides out there, so I thought I'd share the simplest way I found.
How to revert back to an old version of Office that does not have CoPilot
This is fairly simple, thankfully, presuming everything is in the default locations. If not you'll need to adjust the below for where you have things saved.
Click the Windows Button and S to bring up the search box, then type cmd. It will bring up the command prompt as an option. Run it as an administrator.
Paste this into the box at the cursor: cd "\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun"
Hit Enter
Then paste this into the box at the cursor: officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17726.20160
Hit enter and wait while it downloads and installs.
VERY IMPORTANT. Once it's done, open Word, go to File, Account (bottom left), and you'll see a box on the right that says Microsoft 365 updates. Click the box and change the drop down to Disable Updates.
This will roll you back to build 17726.20160, from July 2024, which does not have CoPilot, and prevent it from being installed.
If you want a different build, you can see them all listed here. You will need to change the 17726.20160 at step 4 to whatever build number you want.
This is not a perfect fix, because while it removes CoPilot, it also stops you receiving security updates and bug fixes.
Switching from Office to LibreOffice
At this point, I'm giving up on Microsoft Office/Word. After trying a few different options, I've switched to LibreOffice.
You can download it here for free: https://www.libreoffice.org/
If you like the look of Word, these tutorials show you how to get that look:
If you've been using Word for awhile, chances are you have a significant custom dictionary. You can add it to LibreOffice following these steps.
First, get your dictionary from Microsoft
Go to Manage your Microsoft 365 account: account.microsoft.com.
One you're logged in, scroll down to Privacy, click it and go to the Privacy dashboard.
Scroll down to Spelling and Text. Click into it and scroll past all the words to download your custom dictionary. It will save it as a CSV file.
Open the file you just downloaded and copy the words.
Open Notepad and paste in the words. Save it as a text file and give it a meaningful name (I went with FromWord).
Next, add it to LibreOffice
Open LibreOffice.
Go to Tools in the menu bar, then Options. It will open a new window.
Find Languages and Locales in the left menu, click it, then click on Writing aids.
You'll see User-defined dictionaries. Click New to the right of the box and give it a meaningful name (mine is FromWord).
Hit Apply, then Okay, then exit LibreOffice.
Open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Users[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\wordbook and you will see the new dictionary you created. (If you can't see the AppData folder, you will need to show hidden files by ticking the box in the View menu.)
Open it in Notepad by right clicking and choosing 'open with', then pick Notepad from the options.
Open the text file you created at step 5 in 'get your dictionary from Microsoft', copy the words and paste them into your new custom dictionary UNDER the dotted line.
Save and close.
Reopen LibreOffice. Go to Tools, Options, Languages and Locales, Writing aids and make sure the box next to the new dictionary is ticked.
If you use LIbreOffice on multiple machines, you'll need to do this for each machine.
Please note: this worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, check you've followed each step correctly, and try restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work, I can't provide tech support (sorry).
This! Yes, go to FOSS!! Learn how to use FOSS, learn how to make FOSS better.
LibreOffice is HUGE and it's GREAT and you don't ever have to touch MS again if you know how to take care of your stuff. STOP DEPENDING ON BIG TECHS!
Also, if you really really need it to be MS Office, just pirate it. Get the 2013 version or something. Go to the internet, learn how to pirate safely. Learn about trustworthy sites, about VPN and the Scene. Learn how to get cracked software. It's not some deepweb, just like put an r/ in front of the 🏴☠️ word or something, maybe you'll find something interesting, I don't know. It's a fucking big tech, don't get sad about license stuff or anything. They don't deserve your money, they don't give you an option to opt out, so you do it yourself.
if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted
life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters
Stay alive for every other trans person fighting, stay alive for every trans person who is no longer here, and most importantly stay alive for yourself.
They don’t get to erase us! They don’t get to take away our rights, and treat us as less than human. Don’t let them erase us, and don’t let them make you a statistic. Don’t let them win.
Stay alive
If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for others. Do it out of spite.
I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about politics until you’re able to admit that there are things you love and enjoy that would not and should not exist in a just world. $8 billion dollar budget movies every other month don’t exist in a just world. New 900 GB AAA video games every year don’t exist in a just world. Next day delivery doesn’t exist in a just world. 80 different soda brands don’t exist in a just world.
All of those things come from exploitation on some level, and if you wouldn’t trade those for a world where everyone can eat and have a home no matter who they are or what they do, I don’t know what to tell you.
Man, this post makes me feel conflicted, because on the one hand, of the things listed, next-day delivery is the only one that DOES actually exist in the world today. The others are exaggerations, and while I understand the point being made, they do detract from it.
I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.
I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.
Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.
Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.
Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.
When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”
There are luxuries, and there are artificially-valued, mass-produced, built-to-break trash that are marketed as luxuries. But we don’t solve the problems of fast-fashion by saying, “Welp I guess I shouldn’t wear clothes.”
Next day delivery for many things HAS to exist, it prevents a lot of crises and it saves lives. That’s that. If you are disabled, or laid up for even a couple of weeks with an injury, you will realize it’s a fucking godsend. Disabled people often rely on it on a regular basis.
It can be done perfectly ethically. Delivery driving is actually an enjoyable job that very much suits people who have a hard time in other sorts of jobs. If you aren’t being ruthlessly exploited and browbeaten and underpaid, it’s fine.
I will not explain at length. Yesterday I lost the last remaining member of my family in northern Gaza. It broke my heart to see them collecting the little girl's body parts. I couldn't imagine the pain that happened to them. Click. I cannot forget what happened to my family months ago when our house was bombed and a massacre was committed against my family. Click. Lolo's father was killed so that she would become a lone survivor and an orphan. All I can say is there is no time. Please, can you save what's left of my family.
Nesma Ahmed is raising funds to help her family evacuate from Gaza. Currently, Gaza has been… Mena K needs your support for Help Nesma and h
I love you PBS I love you NPR I love you public libraries I love you wikipedia I love you project gutenberg I love you librivox I love you libby I love you hoopla I love you openlibrary I love you internet archive I love you resources that make information free and accessible to the public
Cujo, a 20 year old black vulture with the American Eagle Foundation! Vultures can consume produce outside of carrion, with personal favourites, but she is a big fan of watermelon.
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